Robert Pinsky says that only Marcus Aurelius can compete with Abraham Lincoln for the distinction of world class writer and politician. Pinsky looks at Lincoln’s poem, “My Childhood-Home I See Again.”
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As we discussed in the previous Going Mental posts, some of the most fundamental mechanisms of the human brain remain a mystery to scientists. Consciousness, intelligence, and sleep are so […]
“Words matter.” This was what Obama said during his campaign. Did his celebrated belief in—and unique gift with—language factor into his choice of artist Ed Ruscha when considering a gift […]
Ian Wilmut appeared on NPR’s Science Friday this past week to promote his new book and to discuss developments in human cloning. Below are a few highlights from the transcript. […]
Glenn Greenwald says today’s news media do not understand what holding authority accountable means; power wins out, he says: government over the press and business over the government.
How is it that we’re able to focus on a distant conversation while ignoring the person who is speaking right in front of us? Tony Zador, a neuroscientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, breaks down the brain mechanisms that allow us to have selective auditory attention.
With brain scans, scientists have learned much about what happens in our heads during sleep, but they still can’t answer the simple question: why do we sleep?
n Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell (MA) Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, and in spite of his fancy name, his French-Canadian parents had to emigrate to Massachusetts to find work. […]
“Every generation is born to this same anatomical legacy; how they then fashion it with clothing is, in miniature, the story of culture,” argues Susan J. Vincent in her sweeping […]
Should humans harmonize with nature of seek to manipulate and master it? These two polar views of man’s role on earth could determine whether we survive climate change, says Tikkun.
In The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson referred to his fellow Americans as “citizens.” But in an early draft of the document, it’s clear that he originally used some other […]
If people realized how different they are from their fellow citizens, the country would fall apart in a weekend. Working as a journalist taught me that. I can’t help noticing, […]
David Brooks’s meditation on “dual-conscious” thinking in yesterday’s Times is an excellent piece leading into Mother’s Day tomorrow. Mothers are natural dual-thinkers; it is a mother’s work, perhaps uniquely, to […]
Last year, betacup extended a challenge to the creative community to rethink the coffee cup from a sustainable angle that eliminates the 58 million disposable cups America tosses in the […]
Jenny Holzer works in words. Her art flows from the endless river of language that surrounds us. She dips her hands into that river and pulls out a tiny handful […]
At the Washington Post today , Juliet Eilperin and Michael Grunwald report on the diverging priorities of House speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic chairmen John Dingell and Henry Waxman, […]
Leonardo da Vinci didn’t invent the sfumato technique, which produced the “smoky” effects of masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa, but he may have perfected it. For centuries, art experts […]
The tragic reality of most sustainability messaging is that it hangs haplessly somewhere between forgettable and toothless. UK-based nonprofit Do The Green Thing is a bold exception. Founded by a […]
If Americans were paid to eat less and exercise more they might be motivated to lose some weight—and save us a bundle on health care—says Dr. Barry M. Popkin, director […]
Fact: over half the world’s population lives in cities. Fact: all developed cities like New York, Tokyo, Singapore and London, are in a race to become “wired”. Fact: the most […]
A new study at the journal Risk Analysis examines the factors shaping public perceptions of nuclear energy and provides important clues about how to effectively mobilize public support for expanded […]
“We may not know why we sleep, dream or wake up, but these states are never static,” writes author Siri Hustvedt. There is a continuum of perception from unconsciousness to full self-consciousness.
Two days ago, San Francisco mandated that all cell phones bear a new label: amount of radiation emitted. A sort of calorie-labeling for health-conscious tech consumers. The science is arguably […]
In an interview with The Nation, historian Tony Judt says consciously choosing to build a social democratic state is an expression of our freedom, not a limit on it.
From the politically charged songs of “The Animal Years” to the more playful narrative style of his new album, the singer has consciously avoided repeating the “same old act.”
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Meanwhile, let another Rolling Stone reporter take your attention, for a different if no less compelling reason: a meditation on a writer we miss, David Foster Wallace. In the latest […]
“There is certainly some strange power that has some overlook on me & directing my life,” Winslow Homer wrote in a letter to his brother late in his life. “That […]
Wall Street II features a hedge fund manager. What will he be like? N+1 editor Keith Gessen has published a book,Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous […]
Is there such a thing as collective guilt? Or if not that, then at least some kind of national responsibility for past state crimes? Was the Nazi period a freak of history, […]
One of the eerier themes in psychology papers is the extreme susceptibility of people’s thoughts and acts to incidental details in their surroundings. For instance, this paper from a recent […]